Passenger Trains > 1/5th Amtrak Customers are Southern Blacks Impacted byTriWkChange

https://www.yahoo.com/news/amtrak-cuts-interrupt-north-south-150024541.html

More race baiting crap

Posted from Android

goduckies Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> More race baiting crap
>
> Posted from Android

Not sure if you actually read the piece, but it seems to be well documented.  Note that it doesn't ascribe a racist motive to the cuts, but simply describes where the impact may be most widely felt.  Thanks for providing such a glowing example of the type of cognitive dissonance that makes social heeling so difficult in our country.

Dave

DavidP Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> goduckies Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > More race baiting crap
> >
> > Posted from Android
>
> Not sure if you actually read the piece, but it
> seems to be well documented.  Note that it
> doesn't ascribe a racist motive to the cuts, but
> simply describes where the impact may be most
> widely felt.  Thanks for providing such a glowing
> example of the type of cognitive dissonance that
> makes social heeling so difficult in our country.
>
> Dave

There is certainly a basis but I read the article and I didn't see the 1/5 figure, maybe I missed it but I would question that figure or anything near.  Possibly 1/5 of a given train.

 Yahoo cut off the comments to their articles, certainly some comments were out of line but usually provided further insight.  If you didnt like the comments you don't have to read them but my guess is the comments punched holes in many of the articles which they did not like.

Bob

DavidP Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> goduckies Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > More race baiting crap
> >
> > Posted from Android
>
> Not sure if you actually read the piece, but it
> seems to be well documented.  Note that it
> doesn't ascribe a racist motive to the cuts, but
> simply describes where the impact may be most
> widely felt.  Thanks for providing such a glowing
> example of the type of cognitive dissonance that
> makes social heeling so difficult in our country.
>
> Dave

   [applause]

Gordon

Anyone who travels by Amtrak is affected by this. Obviously if there is a specific train that has a higher percentage of riders from a specific ethnic or racial group that group would be more impacted. Perhaps Amish on the Lake Shore for example? All people typically travel on a specific date concurrent with their plans. Not just African Americans. Yet another example of trying to promote racial inequality where it doesn’t exist.

Posted from iPhone

One quote from the article;

"Though Amtrak did not provide ridership data on race by route, its trains serve numerous majority-Black communities throughout the South."

In my opinion, the article has no actual numbers to describe the factual impacts to the community.

Back in the 1990s, I would occasionally walk down to Newark Penn Station and watch the southbound Florida train which arrived around noon.  There was always a good crowd of passengers and well wishers. Many communities in southern VA, eastern NC etc were (and are) not well served by air.  But they are well served by rail.When I took Amtrak to Florida, there would be crowds in the middle of the night in small towns to greet incoming relatives.

These same communities sent people to work in the defense factories in the northeast during World War II, in the auto plants in the 1950s, etc. And, they rode the trains of the Southern, Atlantic Coast Line, Seaboard, often in segregated coaches.

It is clear that Black passengers are a significant and valued share of Amtrak's traffic base. Which is a good thing. Amtrak needs more passengers. Of any skin color.

The article say 19% of riders are Black, with is roughly 1 in 5.  Of course, roughly 1 in 7 people in the U.S. are Black, so this isn't really a terribly surprising number. Amtrak tends to serve more urban area's which tend to have a higher percentage Black population. 

Yahoo then focuses the article on the South and the CoNo / Crescent and comes to the surprising conclusion that most urban area's in the South have a high percentage of Blacks as a portion of the population and these urban area's are also the busiest Amtrak stations!.

1/5 is 20%,  which is pretty close. If you understood the history of black Americans, you would know that many African Americans started their journey in this country in the South with slavery and later migrated, mostly to the big cities for work. I work with a number of black Americans (in Indiana) and in getting to know them better I find that many still have relatives in the South (surprisingly some in the deep South) and some have migrated north since then themselves. Some are moving away from the big cities to escape the poverty and violence. I agree, we don't know where the reporter obtained his statistics, but it sounds about right to me. Yup, Amtrak trains run from big city to big city, but there are many rural stations in the South.

Victor A. Baird
http://www.erstwhilepublications.com
 



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/11/20 11:10 by wabash2800.

> One quote from the article;
>
> "Though Amtrak did not provide ridership data on race by route, its trains serve numerous majority-Black communities throughout the South."
>
> In my opinion, the article has no actual numbers to describe the factual impacts to the community.
>
Agreed. Also, how could Amtrak possibly provide such information? Can you imagne the uproar if they collected race and ethicity information from passengers?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/11/20 11:51 by SAAP.

Anything to keep the funding coming in...